Making Your Scrapbook Pages Special

Below you'll find my three favorite ways to make custom scrapbooks personalized, unique and interesting to look at. On other pages of the site you'll find more tips and techniques so be sure to browse around.

Scrapbook Tags - A Fun Feature

Adding tags to your custom scrapbook pages is a fun, easy and inexpensive way to make your scrapbook unique. These tags can be used for text captions, color accent, or thought bubbles. You can write a fun poem, joke, or event information to them. They also work great for personal dedications.

The design, color and content of your tag is as varied as your personality or creativity. Tags can be big or small, square, angled or custom cut. They can be white, generic shopping bag brown, or colored - as well as plain, glossy or textured. It's all up to you, the recipient and the materials on hand.

Here's something else...tags don't need to be restricted to paper products! Some of the most interesting tags are made from wood, fabric, plastic and even specialty glass. Let your creativity go wild.

Shop around at the online scrapbook sites I feature, your local office supply store, craft store, or the ebay auctions below for some pre-made tags. You might also consider printing and cutting out tag templates such as the ones featured as a bonus on this page (scroll 1/2 way down the page - they're fantastic!).

Page Embellishments - Creativity Sets the Stage

Here's where you can get really creative. Embellishments add a special personal touch to your custom scrapbook covers, dividers and inner pages. These are often used as the central theme or main focus for each page, as a means to highlight items. Page borders fit into the category of an embellishment.

So what can you use? Look around your house - ribbons and stickers work great as do beads. You might try fabric or paper cut with pinking shears (or other specialty scissors). Again it's all up to your imagination and creativity.

Custom Scrapbook Ideas

Some Tag Ideas for Your Pages

Generic price tags are fun to use. You can write anything on them and their inclusion makes your scrapbook interactive! 

Use an event badge to keep a memory of a special day alive. This one is blank so you can add your own text to it.

If you walk into the scrapbook section of a craft store you'll find it's very easy to spend hundreds of dollars on specialty embellishments. It's far easier on your wallet to make your own or surf the ebay auctions I have for you below. On the other hand there are a number of templates that include borders and embellishments that you can print on any scrapbook paper you choose on your own desktop printer.

My point is that embellishments do not need to cost you an arm and a leg. Odds and ends that you have from other craft projects will work just fine. Be on the lookout for sales on fabric, silk flowers, lace, beads, sticker paper, cool graphics on gift bags, and whatever else catches your eye. These items will no doubt come in handy on your custom scrapbook project.

A Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures - Adding Text to Your Custom Scrapbook Pages

A well placed word or two, a poem or quote, is a great way to add a unique look to your pages. This type of text is different from adding a journal entry. Text can also be captions below the pictures or those fun thought bubbles. This type of display text could be baby's first words, names of people in a photo, an address or anything else you desire.

You can display the text on a tag, a torn piece of specialty paper, or even some fabric. It could be hand written or printed with a fun computer font. I sometimes will do a word in a variety of fonts and cut them out in random squares to look like ransom letters - they're always well received and fun to make.

Printing or cut and pasting letter shapes onto the page is also a unique way to get scrapbook text onto a page as long as the word or words are short. This way you can use various colors, patterns, textures, and your text will be uniquely yours!

Arranging Specialty Items on the Page

This is an art in itself.

Too many embellishments on a page and your scrapbook will just look cluttered and messy. If you attempt to keep one theme per page, and have all pages relate to the others within the scrapbook you should be alright.

Some tips on arranging a scrapbook page to show off your mementos and embellishments...

Start by arranging all the elements you want to include in the center of your page. Then, start moving out to the edges the 'helper' embellishments, keeping the main focus item in the center. 

You may also like to experiment with shapes within the page. For instance you can arrange all the pieces in a heart shape, or lay out the elements in a circular pattern. Items stacked like children's blocks with text and tags along the border can be fun too. Remember to keep the layout shapes consistent with your scrapbook theme and you can't go wrong.

With some of my projects I'll lay out the embellishments on the page first, then leave it for a day. Of course it helps to have a craft table to do this on, you don't want to end up eating all your meals on the coffee table just because your scrapbook craft has taken over the dining room.

Read more about creating custom scrapbooks:

• using photos in scrapbooks
• how to get the best prices on wholesale scrapbook supplies

Browse:

• scrapbook tags
• scrapbook papers
• scrapbook embellishments

...selling in the Country Store.

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